Music and the Holocaust

‘Zog nit keynmol az du geyst dem letstn veg' (Never say that you are walking the final road), also known as ‘The Partisans' Song’, is perhaps the best-known of the Yiddish songs created during the Holocaust. It was written by the young Vilna poet Hirsh Glik, and based on a pre-existing melody by the Soviet-Jewish composer Dimitri Pokrass. Inspired by the news of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, the song was adopted as the official anthem of the Vilna partisans shortly after it was composed in 1943, and spread with remarkable rapidity to other ghettos and camps.  The song is powerful and defiantly optimistic, acknowledging Jewish suffering in the past and present, and urging the Jewish people to continue fighting for its survival. It is one of the most frequently performed songs at Holocaust commemoration ceremonies.

Never say you are walking your last road
When leaden skies conceal blue days.
Because the hour we have longed for will yet come
Our step will beat out like a drum: We are here!

From the green land of palms to the white land of snow
We arrive with our anguish, with our pain
And wherever a spurt of our blood has fallen
Our might and our courage will sprout.

The morning sun will gild our day;
And yesterday will vanish with the enemy
But if the sun and the dawn are late in coming
May this song go from generation to generation like a password.

This song was written with blood, and not with pencil-lead.
It's no song of a free-flying bird;
A people amongst collapsing walls
Sang this song with pistols in their hands.

See "Jewish Culture During the Shoah" website (Yivo) for a Yiddish version.